I've recently read 6 of the R. A. Salvatore books that tell the story of Drizzt Do'Urden. I enjoyed them very much, and I'm eager to read the other books about this character, and his friends. Unfortunately, but I cant seem to find a listing that tells the chronological order. Most lists just name all of the books written by the author, and not the order in which they should be read.

The books that I read were,

Homeland Exiled Sojourn

The Crystal Shard Streams of Silver The Halflings Gem

So... if there are any Drizzt fans out there, could ye help me out with the order of the story line? Thanks!

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

Well, they do appear in sets, and with publication dates. I assume if you read them in the order they were published, you should do fine. Unless for some really weird reason he references a story that wasn't written yet in one of his books...

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

Gee, I don't know, if I were looking for information about a certain authors books would I start at a website that has nothing at all to do with them, or his own personal we site?

Tough call.

Good luck with the reading of the books, which personally I found pathetically one dimentional and predictable, but your research skills still suck monkey balls.

Edited, Fri May 14 19:17:46 2004 by Smasharoo

____________________________

Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

Actually in this authors case you cant go by pub. date, it would put one of the trilogies out of place cronologically(for the story).

Yes. But there's no requirement for reading the stories in chronological order within the story universe. In fact, in most cases they don't make as much sense, and will reduce the enjoyment of the series.

When an author writes a later story that is a "prequel" to one he's written, it's usually written with the assumpion that the readers have already read the story that was written earlier, but occurs later in the lifetime of the character. He's often writing it to explain some history that has significance to the other story. You'll likely be going "huh?" while reading that story because you have no idea why he's going on about something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. Then, when you read the other series that takes place later in the character's life, you may ruin some of the enjoyment because you know a bit of history that was not revealed when the story was originally written.

Just read them in the order they were published. You will guarantee that every story will be consistent and make sense that way (cause they had to when they were written). There is zero chance that the earlier stories (by publication date) will require that you have information from a later published book for it to make sense. There's no guarantee of the opposite being true...

Actually in this authors case you cant go by pub. date, it would put one of the trilogies out of place cronologically(for the story).

Yes. But there's no requirement for reading the stories in chronological order within the story universe. In fact, in most cases they don't make as much sense, and will reduce the enjoyment of the series.

When an author writes a later story that is a "prequel" to one he's written, it's usually written with the assumpion that the readers have already read the story that was written earlier, but occurs later in the lifetime of the character. He's often writing it to explain some history that has significance to the other story. You'll likely be going "huh?" while reading that story because you have no idea why he's going on about something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. Then, when you read the other series that takes place later in the character's life, you may ruin some of the enjoyment because you know a bit of history that was not revealed when the story was originally written.

Just read them in the order they were published. You will guarantee that every story will be consistent and make sense that way (cause they had to when they were written). There is zero chance that the earlier stories (by publication date) will require that you have information from a later published book for it to make sense. There's no guarantee of the opposite being true...

I've never actually read them myself...when I was in highschool I worked for B&N and everyone use to ***** about this series......But thanks anyhow.

The Drizzt books are out of order if you go by published timeline as opposed to chronological timeline.

The Icewind Dale trilogy was written before the Homeland/Exile/Sojourn trilogy. I don't know the "official" names for the different trilogies and quartets that he has out.

... Just pointing that out, is all. :)

And while the books may be rather one dimensional, I like reading them the same way I like reading the Deathlands novels. Predictable, one dimensional, but fun if you just pretend you aren't a serious book reader for a few hours. :)

Kinda like watching Van Helsing.. if you really think about it too much, the movie sucked. If you just go to have some silly fun, it was cool. :)

And while the books may be rather one dimensional, I like reading them the same way I like reading the Deathlands novels. Predictable, one dimensional, but fun if you just pretend you aren't a serious book reader for a few hours. :)

I read Terry Pratchet for that :). Look, I'm all for one dimentional characters in pulp books. I've probably read all the "Spencer" books. My biggest problem with the Salvatore books are that the writing itself is repetative. While I realize there's only so many ways to describe swordplay or whatever, seeing "They circled for position" for the 300th time get's to be a little much.

Plus they just get more and more trite, not helped by the fact that they're really large advertisments for a RPG. I think that's probably the part that bothered me the most. When I was reading them and thinking "clearly some TSR editor added this part to make it a better sale for some product".

There was no need to have the individual Drizzit books. They were just written for cash. They're like the obligatory "Illustrated Atlas of the Underdark" or whatever other crap they can toss onto guliable fans.

I thought the first couple of Xanth books were cute too, but does anyone really need to read the 97th one?

____________________________

Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

I got all the way up to.. oh, I don't even remember (I used to know the entire series titles by heart, that's how wierd I can be...) I think up to where the Demon Xanth turned into a donkey headed dragon and married a mortal girl named Chlorine. I think I bought the next book, but I didn't read it.

The thing I liked best about the Xanth books was that they didn't stick with one character (and thus, get too overly repetetive), it moved on, aged the characters, had characters die off and new ones come into the spotlight.

Which is not to say, there are only so many puns I can handle before they get repetative and I want to scream.

But, the biggest thing going for Xanth books, that I've heard of, is that it's a big time book/series that gets a lot of non-readers into reading, just because it's so silly and fun.

Wow...just picked up the book for my 13 hour flight to Hawaii! I read the series about 10 years ago when TSR was still around and published these as individual paperbacks. Like an idiot to sold them all at a rummage sale. When I was walking through Barnes & Noble looking for something fun to read I suddenly remembered how much I really liked Salvatore's works.

If memory serves the Icewind Dale trilogy was written first and the Homeland trilogy written later in order to elaborate more on Dritz's background. There are other books out there concerning Mezzoberazan, but these weren't written by Salvatore (I may be wrong on this, for I stopped reading the paperback around 1993).

While reading Homeland a second time I had a thought concerning how much fun it would be to start an EQ guild based completely around the "underworld houses." The guild be would be made up entirely of dark elves and the minions that serve them (trolls and ogres). Guild wars between rival houses would be a blast (literally)! A GM can adjudicate a guild war were every noble member of the house needs to be killed in order for the guild to advance in the drow hierarchy.

Something definitely different that the usual family or raiding guild.

I think up to where the Demon Xanth turned into a donkey headed dragon and married a mortal girl named Chlorine. I think I bought the next book, but I didn't read it.

Let me just say I'm pretty glad I quit around Vale of the Vole or whatever it was called. Even then I was pretty much reading them out of inertia.

Agreed that Salvatore is over-rated, a point I've made myself on the forums. He doesn't "suck" and the Icewind Dale books were okay in a "this is not serious literature, it's just for fun" sort of way, but the other books failed to impress. Well, to be fair, I quit after the second trilogy so the ones after could rank up there with War & Peace and I wouldn't know.

The one book I've enjoyed most, out of the 7.5 i've read so far, was Sojourn, the last of the homeland series.

From other people's posts, I gather that "hardcore" fantasy readers have some dislike for Salvatore. Perhaps his work is too "main-stream" as some of it has spent time on the New York Times Best Seller List.

Salvatore's dark elf books are the first fantasy books i've read outside of the LOTR books, that i've really been able to get in to. That is not to say that I've tried a lot, but what has peaked my interest in this particular series is its close resemblance to the world of Norrath!

Before playing EQ, I really was not interested in fantasy literature, I mostly read Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, and other often best selling authors. I spent a lot of time in college reading technical journals for literature reviews, and the first book I grabbed off the shelf in the grocery store was a welcome escape from the pages and pages of dry research papers.

Anyway, at some point I got heavily addicted to EQ, and ran into scores of toons whos name's were variations on Drizzt (Drizit, Drittz, Drizt...), Zaknafein, Catie Brie, Breunor, Wulfgar and Artemis Enteri. It didnt take long before I asked someone... what are all of these similar names about!?! Well, after making a few jokes about un-original toon names, I was told to go out and read those books, because they are pretty fun to follow.

I read the Crystal Shard at exactly the right time in my EQ carreer to become immediately interested. The main characters are a dwarf warrior, a barb warrior, a delf ranger, human ranger, and a hlf rogue! No healer and you could sub in a caster, but its almost an eq party!

Anyway they might not be the most well written books, but I definately enjoy them. What helped was that I immediately had a familiarity with the types of characters as Salvatore's description fell much in line with my impressions from eq.

For anyone who wants to read some tales of adventure closely in line with the eq way of things, i'd reccomend this author and series! The only thing it needs imo is a little more undead/necromancy ;)